In tackling this column, I knew I was coming at it from a particular vantage: I consider myself much more of a polyamorist than a swinger.  For this reason, I don’t write a lot about swinging: while I’ve met and played with some swinging folk, I don’t consider myself an expert on what some of them call “the lifestyle.” 

What I do know is that many polyamorous people define themselves in opposition to swingers, and in fact, at least locally, swingers tend to dwell outside of the intersecting subcultures that one often sees gathered together: the polyfolk, queers and kinksters, the geeks and gamers, the DIYers and cohousers, the pagans and atheist-engineers.  I can speculate a number of reasons for this, and lay down a couple of key differences between the general population of swingers and polyfolk.  But what I also hope for is a greater understanding between the two groups, who often see each other in a negative light.

In 2004, a friend of mine named Pepper Mint did a wonderful presentation at the Building Bridges conference and shared his notes for that presentation online.  The presentation sought to bring together polyamorists and swingers under the identity umbrella of nonmonogamy.  But there are problems.  For one, he writes, swinging is more familiar than polyamory is to mainstream culture – and is demonized by it.  (This is changing somewhat, as polyamory becomes more visible.)  Therefore, when poly people are misidentified as swingers, they often react negatively, putting swingers into some other identity bucket than themselves and usually employing negative stereotypes about swingers.  Swinging is about sex – poly is about love, some say – which is a false distinction.  Swinging is about sex parties, poly is about having relationships, say others – while many people I know go to sex parties all the time and have relationships, too.  In this way, even though both poly and swinging people are opposing the same mainstream system of monogamy, they set themselves in opposition to each other.

Part of this probably has to do with visibility: not only how familiar the mainstream is with a given culture, but how out the members of that culture are in general.  Ironically, most poly people I’ve come into contact with are far more out about who they are than swingers, and given the above, this makes sense.  Swingers tend to be vilified by mainstream culture, but also tend to be more a part of it than poly people.  Swingers are often married heterosexual couples who appear outwardly “just like everyone else,” and because they probably have mortgages, jobs, kids and straight communities, they often keep their activities secret.  Given the mainstream viewpoint of swingers and swingers’ own desire to continue operating within the mainstream culture, it’s no wonder that many of them remain extremely private about their swinging. 

It’s also no wonder, then, that many poly people choose to distance themselves from the culture of swinging.  Unlike swingers, poly people often must be out at least to a certain extent: after all, it is difficult to pretend to everyone in the world that you don’t have two husbands.  Your kids are certainly going to notice, your neighbors probably have a good idea.  You might keep it secret from your workplace, particularly if you don’t have more than one partner living with you or if the knowledge would get you fired.  If you have to be out in order to live happily – or even just for practical reasons – you probably want to identify yourself as separate from “those sex-crazed people” over there, since the sex-negativity of the larger culture is still rampant.

Ultimately, this divide of out versus not-out might be the main wedge that separates people who should be natural allies.  By and large, swingers seem to see themselves as normal folks who are just out having some excitement on Saturday nights.  They don’t feel the need to separate further from mainstream culture or to participate in other alternative lifestyle activities: they are often happily suburban, Christian, and ranging from working class through to wealthy.  Aside from their adventures with other couples, which admittedly sometimes turn into long-term, dating-like friendships, swingers tend to fully participate in Normal Life ™.  Poly people, on the other hand, are often life-hackers: people who are interested in doing things differently from the norm to see if they work better for them.  It might start with dating more than one person with everyone’s knowledge instead of cheating.  Then there might be experimentation with kinky sex, communal living, growing your own food and building your own stuff.  Often one steps out of mainstream religious choices into atheism or more earth-based spirituality.  Many polyfolk are entrepreneurs in the widest sense: not just running their own businesses but generating the business of their lives.  Those who aren’t makers and doers are sometimes troubled artists, living outside the mainstream in other ways and struggling to make their visions work.

In other words, swingers and polyamorists, two groups of people united by a common desire to love differently, are divided not only by the ways in which they choose to practice nonmonogamy, but by the other ways in which they choose to live their lives.  While this is of course not true of all members of either group, it’s a fair approximation, and tends to keep the two communities apart.

The question becomes, what are we losing by being so separate?  What opportunities might we be missing, and how might we work together on issues like equal rights, protecting our children, sexual freedom and legal protections for nonstandard family units? 

It seems like there are many areas on which we could work together.  But swingers have the challenge of working within the mainstream even as their life choices are condemned by it.  And polyamorists are working to make their choices acceptable to the mainstream even as they often reject its other strictures.  One wonders what would happen if we joined forces and stopped worrying about what the larger world thinks.  After all, we share both difficulties and community needs.  As Pepper says, “the two communities have common opposition: the same laws will be used to punish us, the same prejudices will cause our bosses to fire us, and so on.” In addition, “because both communities are sexually nonmonogamous, we share concerns and needs in common, the only the most obvious of which are STD knowledge and prevention tactics.”

If we banded together rather than remaining so separate, perhaps the larger culture could expand a bit, and discover that more is possible: it’s certainly happened before.  But to start with, we might simply try not judging each other.